Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Dear Abby

This was written in response to a Dear Abby letter in which Abby suggested the coworker speak to a supervisor about a lady who chose to display a picture of her deceased child on her desk. Abby mentions that it is inappropriate to have such pictures displayed at work.

Dear Abby,

I was almost speechless to see your reply to "Appalled" on February 5, 2007. My first thought was not how sad it was that this woman had a picture of her deceased child on her desk but how truly infuriating the woman writing to you was. I was hoping for a nice reply from you educating the woman on infant loss and instead I felt slapped in the face by a reply that I know your mother, the original Abby, would never have written.As a mother who has lost two children shortly after their birth I think that maybe you could have handled this with a little more love and care. Did the woman who wrote in ever think about how hard it is for her co-worker to look at everyone else's pictures of their LIVING children on their desks while her only child is gone? No not once. Many women who have lost children find it hard to even TALK about someone else's living child let alone look at pictures and see what they are missing. Your response was so politically incorrect it made me scream, it made my husband mad and my mother and grandmother as well. Yes, once upon a time it was considered "logical" to not speak about our deceased children and to "forget" about them. Unfortunately that proved to be harmful to many women and now we have found that the best way to work through our grief is to talk about our children, keepphotos of them and have others remember that there was a child as well.

Abby the loss of a child is deep, it's not something that you ever recover from fully. Even the birth of another subsequent child cannot heal the pain that you feel. As a volunteer for the Sidelines National Support Network, an organization that helps mothers through high risk pregnancies, I would like to invite you to take a look at the grief resources at our website so that you can educate yourself on the loss of a child and hopefully next time this subject comes up you will knowhow to handle it better. http://www.sidelines.org/resources/grief-support/